1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a plant for making and packaging cigarettes, comprising a plurality of cigarette-making machines (makers), a plurality of machines for packaging cigarettes (packers), at least in packs, if necessary in cartons and boxes, a first transport system for the transport of the manufacturing materials to the cigarette-making machines and packaging machines, and a second transport system for the transport of cigarettes in containers from the cigarette-making machines to the packaging machines or from the cigarette-making machines via an intermediate store to the packaging machines.
For the sake of simplicity, the cigarette-making machines are called hereinafter "makers" and the various types of cigarette-packaging machines are called "packers".
2. Description of the Prior Art
Systems described in, for example, Applicant's German Offenlegungsschrift 40 18 266.5 are known. In those systems, each maker which produces the cigarettes from the manufacturing materials supplied, i. e., the tobacco blend, the cigarette paper, and, as the case may be, the filter material, is associated with a particular packer line which packages the cigarettes arriving from the maker in packs, the same in cartons, and the latter in boxes. If making and packaging only one particular type of cigarette in a particular pack are of interest, such systems are quite suitable. But in the cigarette-making industry there is a trend to offer the greatest possible number of types of cigarettes. For example, for one brand of cigarettes there exist seven different types of cigarettes (length, imprint, lights blend, etc.) which must be packaged for various countries in about 80 different versions of packs. It is not possible to operate for this purpose 7 different makers and 80 different packers in side-by-side relationship. At least some of the resulting 80 production units would not be used to capacity since only relatively small quantities of some of the versions in certain packs will have to be produced; on the other hand, the unit composed of maker and packer would often not be adequate for other cigarettes and packs produced on a larger scale so that a plurality of such units would have to be operated in side-by-side relationship for that purpose.
In order to produce such a variety of versions one must either frequently refit existing production and packaging lines, which means extended down times of the system, or make use of the possibility of storing the cigarettes produced by the maker in so-called storage shelves, to collect these shelves, and to keep them in intermediate storage or to transport them immediately to the packer. This procedure is very costly and prone to failure. In addition, this procedure is very labour intensive.